Windows Phone Central App Roundup: Cooking Apps

Okay... so yesterday was Thanksgiving and many of you are dining on leftovers for the next week (or longer). The last Windows Phone Central App Roundup some may want to see if one on cooking. Still this roundup may give you a few ideas on what to do with all those leftovers or help you get a jump on cooking for the upcoming Holiday dinners.

Regardless of the Holidays, you can always find a reason to prepare a great home cooked meal. The apps in today's roundup will help you find recipes, walk you through preparing the meal, find an appropriate beverage and even help you when you really don't feel like cooking.

We picked five apps from the Windows Phone Store that stood out but realize that we might have missed one or two worth mentioning. If so, feel free to share your favorite cooking app in the comments.

Allrecipes (free): Allrecipes is a mobile app for the Allrecipes.com website and includes thousands of top rated recipes. Allrecipes is nicely laid out with daily recipe recommendations, a page to save your favorite recipes for easy access, and the dinner spinner.

The dinner spinner feature is a nice tool for those times you really don't know what to cook or you know what you want but not sure how you want it. The dinner spinner has three categories that can be chosen at random or manually set. You have the dish type, main ingredient, and preparation time. Once you get all three set, hit the check mark and a list of recipes will be generated matching the criteria.

Recipes cover the ingredients, step by step directions, and nutritional value. Allrecipes is a very nice cooking app for your Windows Phone. It's a free app and you can find Allrecipes here at the Windows Phone Store.

Cocktail Flow (trial/$2.99): What's dinner without a cocktail? If you're in need of an adult beverage, Cocktail Flow will point you in the right direction.

Cocktail Flow offers an alphabetical listing of mixed drinks, arranges them by category, offers downloadable drink packages for special events (e.g. Christmas, New Years, Halloween, etc.) and a surprise me feature that will randomly generate cocktail recipes.

In addition to all that Cocktail Flow also has a Barstock page where you can keep track of your bar inventory and find drinks to mix with what you have on hand.

Cocktail Flow has a healthy stock of recipes and is just a darned good looking app. There is a free trial available with the full version running $2.99. You can find Cocktail Flowhere at the Windows Phone Store.

Betty Crocker (free): When you think about cooking and recipes, Betty Crocker is one name that often comes to mind. The Betty Crocker app for your Windows Phone delivers recipes from the famous cookbook to your phone.

Not a Betty Crocker member? No worries. The app will give you access to hundreds of Betty Crocker recipes. The Meal Finder will let you fill in the blanks with what key ingredients you have and Betty Crocker will generate a collection of recipes based on those ingredients. You also have options to search recipes by keyword or just tap the "Surprise Me" button to have a recipe selected at random.

Recipes are laid out on one page with all the necessary ingredients, cooking directions and nutritional facts. Betty Crocker is a free app for your Windows Phone and you can snatch it up here at the Windows Phone Store.

Pizza Hut (free): For those nights you just don't have the energy to cook, pizza is a fantastic alternative. The Pizza Hut app makes it easy to order your favorite pie from your Windows Phone.

Not only can you order your favorite pizza from the Pizza Hut app but you can also locate the closest store, and view the Pizza Hut Twitter and Facebook pages.

Orders can be placed for carry out, delivery or eat in. The order menu covers the mail categories (pizza, sides, deserts and drinks) as well as a pages listing all the current Pizza Hut deals and the popular menu items.

The Pizza Hut app makes it easier to order dinner on the go. Unfortunately for now, the order functionality is limited to the U.S. market.

The Pizza Hut app is a free app for your Windows Phone and you can find it here at the Windows Phone Store.

Epicurious Recipes and Shopping List (free): Epicurious Recipes and Shopping List taps into the 300,000+ recipes at the Epicurious.com food site. Epicurious has more of a gourmet flavor to it's recipe collection and offers the ability to share recipes with friends by email and create shopping lists from the recipes you are about to tackle.

Epicurious has over fifty categories of recipes and individual recipes cover the ingredients, preparation steps, any reviews from other Epicurious members, and photos. One of Epicurious's handy features is the ability to create a shopping list from the recipe view. Just tap the "list" button at the bottom of the recipe pages and a shopping list is generated and listed on the app's main pages. The list will cover everything you need to create the dish.

Epicurious is a free app for your Windows Phone that you can snatch up here at the Windows Phone Store.

So there you have it... a handful of apps that will help you navigate around the kitchen, get creative from behind the bar, and make it easier to order take out when you don't feel like cleaning dishes.

As with other topics of our roundups, this list just scratches the surface on the number of apps available at the Windows Phone Store. If we overlooked your favorite Windows Phone cooking app, feel free to sound off in the comments and share your favorite cooking app.

Reader comments

Windows Phone Central App Roundup: Cooking Apps

Allrecipes is excellent. I'm a bit surprised that Big Oven didn't make the cut though as that is also an excellent cooking app. Btw, I use Allrecipes only my Surface as well, it's a must for anyone who likes to throw down in the kitchen along with Cook Book.

Wish Allrecipes woudl add the ability to login to view My Reccipe Box and My Shopping List. Their website lists those functions as not available yet, so hope they get on it soon...though they haven't made any progress for wuite a while ;)

On this topic, I'm a fan of the Dirty Dozen app, which provides a list of produce ranked by pesticide level - making it easier to decide which are worth paying extra for in the organics section, and which are just fine to buy conventionally.

All Recipes and Epicurious are my favorite recipe apps. All Recipes really needs a speed update, and Epicurious does as well, it's no where near as nice to use as on an ipad (just comparing). WP8 shoul dhopefully get updates for these apps.